Chapter Text
May drew to an end and June began, tepid showers giving way to slightly warmer summer storms. With their dead buried and their injured healing, most of the wizarding world had turned to rebuilding what they could of their society. The Ministry was still in shambles, but they’d pulled together enough of a working force to start getting things in order for trials. Although there would be many, Kingsley Shacklebolt and his team seemed determined to do things right and not repeat the mistakes committed after the previous war. Those who’d already slipped through the cracks couldn’t be helped, but better some of the Death Eaters face fair trials than none at all. It was a slow process, but it was giving Harry at least a small bit of hope that things in the wizarding world might be changing.
Harry had mostly stayed home for the few weeks after Fred’s funeral, only visiting the Burrow and attending the remaining funerals. He’d had an owl from Andromeda about meeting for tea and had happily responded, but was secretly pleased that it wasn’t for another week or so. Everything had been so hectic that he hadn’t realised how much he needed time alone until he’d had a couple of quiet days in his house. It had been like a breath of fresh air, a knot he hadn’t known he’d had unwinding from his shoulders, and slowly he’d been able to start making plans and deciding what he wanted to do, instead of simply reacting in the way he’d carried himself through the war.
The first thing was to realise that tidying up the broken furniture and making the facilities actually habitable wasn’t enough to make a house a home, and Harry was shaken by the realisation of how desperately he wanted a real home. It was probably much more of a surprise that it should have been, but he’d never been the most in touch with his emotions. Still, it turned into a nice project for him. Aside from dealing with all the cursed items - of which there were many, despite the Order’s purge a few years ago - Harry found that his knowledge of household spells was somewhat lacking. Despite seeing Molly Weasley use such spells casually, it had never really occurred to him that there might be different kinds of cleaning spells or magic that could make the whole process much easier. After the first time he’d accidentally stripped the paint off the walls with a scourgify, Kreacher had wordlessly pointed Harry in the direction of the library and stood with a disappointed face in the doorway until Harry had found a promising book and started reading it.
There was so much of it. Spells for cleaning, varnishing, dusting, circulating the air, pleasant smells, waterproofing, protection from pests and other damages… There were spells for every tiny need and minor inconvenience and Harry felt as if a small world had opened up to him. He’d practised as many as he could and watched Grimmauld Place brighten, pest-free, with fresh paint, gleaming tapestries, polished furnishings, and magic humming in the walls. The more spells he did, the lighter the house felt, as if it were breathing again. The wards, solid still even after years of neglect, felt less oppressive, and he tuned into them more easily. Harry felt better for using his magic so much too. He hadn’t ever heard anything about it, but he had a gut feeling, when he thought about it, that it was bad for wixen to not use magic. He always felt happier and more energetic at Hogwarts, but that was normal since he was away from the Dursleys and eating as much as he’d like, but now he had to reconsider if at least some of it was because of the magic. It flowed through him like a golden river every time he cast a spell, bubbling and sparking, and every day felt just a little stronger and more stable. And the more stable his magic felt, the more Harry found himself relaxing just a little, more centred and certain of himself. It soothed something he hadn’t known had been hurting.
Once he began looking, there were spells for everything. The Blacks had believed in comporting themselves with the grace of an old, rich, Pureblood family, so there were compilations of spells on keeping oneself respectable for polite society, and for daily, useful magic. Many of them were clearly geared at young children, just starting at Hogwarts, who needed to learn how to stay presentable in company without their parents’ help. Some of them seemed ridiculous – who invented an entire spell to keep your tie straight? – but it did explain why so many of Harry’s schoolmates were perfectly turned out at all times. He read through them all, fascinated. Harry had always done better with an immediate aim and obvious goal, so magic that he could and would use on a daily basis for a practical purpose was much easier for him to grasp than academic transfiguration theorems. Some of the little ones, like spells for sharpening quills and stopping them from dripping ink, almost made him want to tear his hair out from how much Harry wished he’d known them earlier. Of course, he could have known them earlier if he’d ever set foot in the library without some emergency going on, but he’d learned his mistake now and wouldn’t make it again. Though, in his defence, Harry had had a lot going on in his school years.
Harry never quite finished reading about those daily and household spells, picking a new book up now and again when he had time, but he rapidly moved onto working further on the house. Hermione had seen what he was doing and was full of suggestions – why not take down Walburga Black’s painting, and the rows of house elf heads, what about changing the paint, brighter lights… He’d shown her the books he’d read and soon her room had cheerful teal walls, overlaid with a shimmery enchantment that moved like gentle waves. She’d also experimented with wizarding space conservation methods, which were generally easier when you could shrink items not currently in use and move heavy objects easily, and had formed some kind of revolving bookcase in the wall which absolutely baffled him. Her bed was slung with a string of floating lights, like fairy lights, which let out curling wisps of silver. Each time a wisp got too far away from the source, it made a tiny pop and released the smell of jasmine. She’d deepened the window ledge and made a cosy window seat, surrounded by plump cushions and small balls of light. It was a lot more whimsical than Harry had really expected from Hermione, but it suited her in a way to be so much freer with her magic.
Harry himself had been inspired by her room and had made a nook of soft things in one wall. It was small and warm and safe, hidden behind a tapestry which he left open most of the time. He’d had complicated feelings initially, when he realised what he wanted, as it reminded him of his cupboard under the stairs, but that cupboard was the only place he’d felt safe in the Dursley household. Eventually, after some stewing on the topic, Harry decided that it didn’t matter why he wanted the nook, it was enough that he wanted it, and he didn’t have to think about the Dursleys anymore if he didn’t want to. So, in typical Harry style, he shoved the feelings away and ignored them. He’d grown to love the nook. It had a small shelf inside for snacks and things he brought with him, and he set lights flickering above him so he could read.
Outside his nook, his bedroom was done mostly in a dark blue, with wooden furnishings in different but still dark shades. It made the room feel smaller, but smaller felt safer and less overwhelming. He had tried the sparkling wave patterns like Hermione’s room, but the movement in the corners of his eyes had kept him on edge, so he’d dispelled them. He had, though, copied the fairy lights, though Harry’s were gold and he kept changing what they smelled like. While Hermione had her rotating bookshelf and space saving strategies, Harry had tried using all the available room. Magic meant that there was no real reason that everything had to be, or stay, on the floor, so long as you were sure your charms would hold. He had shelves all up his walls and concealed storage on the ceilings. Not that he really had that many things to put on all those shelves, but maybe, with an actual home, he’d come to have more than the bare minimum of possessions. He was studiously not thinking about what might happen in a few years’ time.
Ron hadn’t done much with his room. For obvious reasons, he was less generally impressed with the household magic than Harry or Hermione were, but he had enjoyed turning everything an eye-searing orange. He had also turned one wall into a display of his chocolate frog cards, all protected against dust and damage.
Harry had thought for a moment before setting aside a few of the other rooms – and it still amazed him that he had so many rooms, Grimmauld Place was much bigger when fully explored than he’d thought it was. Two rooms, he’d left mostly alone after filling them with functional furniture. Those two were for Neville and Luna, should they ever want to visit. Another was for guests. The fourth, which was his project for a good week, was for Teddy Lupin. Immortal or no, Harry was determined that his house would always have a space for his godson. This one, he’d needed to consult many books on because, as he’d told Andromeda, he knew nothing about babies. Luckily, thousands of years of wixen parents did know about babies, so there were plenty of notes on baby care, and he set up the room full of alarms and safety measures, before moving onto the decoration. One of the spells, which worked something like a baby monitor and linked into his room, seemed like it could be used much too easily as a spying charm, and honestly Harry wasn’t sure why it wasn’t. Perhaps it was. He shuddered and resolved to read up on spying charms and how to detect and remove them.
The decoration was fun. He’d wanted to do something similar to the Great Hall ceiling, but no one knew exactly what spells had been used for that and he wasn’t willing (right now) to put in the weeks or months of effort to find out or create his own alternative. Instead, he’d done a much simpler version, with dark paint and small twinkly lights which, with a flick of a wand, could change into the colours of a soft pastel sunrise. The walls were a soft yellow for now, but he had vague plans of asking others, his friends and the Weasleys, to come round and help him paint a mural. His own artistic talent was somewhat…lacking, but perhaps between them, they could do something nice. Otherwise, he’d found old baby furniture and a few toys in the partially decrepit attic, and had set about cleaning, fixing, and sometimes recolouring them. A delicate cream crib, painted from its original black, sat in the centre of the room now, under a floating mobile of charging unicorns and hippogriffs. The metal of the mobile chimed lightly as the hippogriffs reared and the unicorns shook their manes as they galloped. In one corner, there was a rocking chair, which was possibly the comfiest chair Harry had ever sat in. He still knew nothing about babies really, but at least Andromeda was willing to let him try, and he was determined to be the best almost-immortal godfather that a little boy could have.
Harry was aware, to an extent, that he was using the house renovations to avoid the outside world, but it did genuinely make him happy too. And he had Hermione, who always lived there, and Ron, who had mostly moved back to the Burrow but still visited every day. Still, eventually there came the day where he had to set aside his projects – ignoring the tempting prospect of trying to tackle the garden (and who even knew that Grimmauld Place had a garden anyway?) – and consider the books that he had brought back from the Underworld. He’d already had a look at funeral customs and honouring the dead for Fred but hadn’t touched them since. Hermione had, he knew, but she hadn’t mentioned the contents to him, aside for asking to borrow them. Something about his processing time, he hadn’t really been listening.
Reluctantly, he collected them from the library table Hermione had placed them on, pinned down by a small cauldron and a few ropes, and started flipping through the titles. There was the one he’d seen before, on divine magic, another on the structure and function of the Underworld, a guide to Chthonic deities, an overview on the Overworld gods, a separate book on non-godly immortals and demi-gods, a bestiary of Greek monsters and a shorter treatise on magical plants. There were also a few pamphlets from various services, offering him his choice of garden statue, magic items, or express delivery mail. Lastly, there was a thick book, which could only really be described as a tome, on chthonic magic, compiled by Hecate. It called to him. His fingers brushed the leather cover softly, feeling Hecate’s magic as surely as he could see its bright lights ripple across the black surface like the rock of her temple. The book zapped him gently and shuffled itself to the bottom of the pile.
Harry huffed out a laugh. Message received. “Alright then,” he said to the scattered books, knowing he looked like an idiot. “Which order do you think I should read you in then?” The books, despite not having eyes or really any other identifiable features to make expressions, gave the distinct impression of eyeing each other calculatingly. There was a scramble, a few flying shreds of paper, and one large huff of dust before they settled into a more or less orderly pile. At the top, the Underworld book was still trying to dislodge the Overworld gods book from its position, but the latter clung on stubbornly. “Enough.” Harry said, somewhat surprised when they actually seemed to listen to him and settle. “I get that you’re both very important and relevant and will try to read you both as soon as possible.” If books could preen, these certainly were. “But I understand this order because I am in the Overworld right now, even if I will be part of the Underworld, so I’m more likely to get in trouble here for now.” The Underworld book deflated, and he gave it a consoling pat. Immediately afterwards, he had to put his head in his hands – honestly, what had his life come to? Sighing, he picked up the book on Overworld gods. “The rest of you, behave. The sooner I read this one, the sooner I can read you.” The bestiary, which had been sneakily edging towards the shelves behind the table, seemed particularly aggrieved, but grudgingly slunk back to the rest of the pile. Somehow, Harry felt that this was the sort of madness that he would have to come to expect from the world he was entering.
He brought “The Self-Updating Guide to Overworld Deities for the New or Truly Oblivious” up to his room on the third floor and, after a moment’s thought, kicked off his slippers and climbed into the reading nook, though he left the tapestry pulled back. With a practiced flick of his wand, soft golden lights spiralled over his head and the book floated in front of him. Kreacher, who had the unnerving capacity to sneak up on Harry despite being old, slow, and grumbling under his breath, floated a tray with tea and biscuits to him. “Thanks, Kreacher!” The old elf grumbled but nodded. The biscuits, he put onto the shelf in easy reach and the teacup floated next to him, occasionally nudging his hand to remind him of its presence. It would stay warm, the cup’s enchantments made sure of that, but tea that was kept heated for too long always gained a funny taste.
Sinking into the rich, burgundy cushions and pulling a fleece blanket over his knees, Harry took a moment to feel warm and at ease, surrounded by the glow of his own magic and the house’s. He was trying to do what Hecate had said and learn to love magic again. It was slow going when he’d seen, and felt, it do so much harm, but moments like these were helping. He flipped the book open with a touch of magic and began to read.
It started out like a story. In the beginning, there was only Chaos. From Chaos, came Night, Light, and Darkness. From Night came Day, and from Day came the Earth, the Skies, and the Sea. The Earth and the Skies created the Titans and monsters. The Skies loved the Titans but not his monstrous children, and he cast them into the depths of the Underworld. The Earth, furious, sent her Titan son, Kronos to attack his father. As the Skies bled into the Sea, they created the goddess of love, Aphrodite. Kronos married his sister, Rhea, and together they had six children, who were the gods. Kronos was fearful, having received a prophecy that his son would destroy him in the same way he’d attacked his own father, so swallowed his children whole as they were born. Rhea couldn’t bear for the youngest, Zeus, to meet the same fate, so wrapped a rock instead, which Kronos swallowed. Zeus was then raised by Amaltheia, the goat-nymph, until he was ready to face his father. Zeus then tricked his father into vomiting up his siblings with the help of a wine-mustard mixture, and together the gods waged war against Kronos. Eventually, with the help of the Earth’s monstrous children, the gods won against the Titans, and Kronos was dismembered and cast into Tartarus, where his monstrous siblings had previously been. The Earth was displeased. The three sons of Kronos, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, cast lots for the three main domains, and were awarded the Heavens, the Seas, and the Underworld respectively, becoming the most powerful of the gods. Zeus became King of the gods. Hera married Zeus and became Queen. Hestia and Demeter chose not to marry one of their siblings and gained powerful, but more subtle, domains of the home and agriculture.
Then, the narrative paused to give brief profiles on all these figures. The Titans were mostly swept over, with the note that none of them were dead, since they were immortal, and actually few were imprisoned or incapacitated – primarily Kronos in Tartarus and Atlas holding up the sky. The rest were either performing their roles under the regime of the gods, or off sulking somewhere about the good old days. There was a list of them and their domains, which Harry wasn’t sure he would ever remember, but he was surprised to find his new adoptive mother, Hecate, on that list.
Other tables listed the children of the other primordial gods and Harry tracked through them to find that most of the Underworld gods came from Erebus, the Darkness. It was an enormous array of names with a dizzying number of connections. Harry was slightly queasy to see the number of gods sleeping with their relatives but, as the book attempted to argue in glittery black ink, concepts and personifications had no DNA. Still, it was something that his human side protested vigorously. Each of the listed name could be pressed and the book would flip to the page on them, but for now, Harry decided to focus on the main gods – there were a truly ridiculous number altogether.
He learned that Zeus, the king and Lord of the Skies, ruled from Olympus, and had a bad habit of sleeping willingly or unwillingly with just about anyone who took his fancy, much to the fury of his wife, the goddess of marriage. Hera also had a bad habit, hers of punishing the women her husband slept with, rather than the god himself. Both were, if he believed Hecate’s rather irreverent style of writing, rather enamoured with their own grandiosity, and would take offence at any perceived slight. This was, the book admitted, a fault of most of the gods, but Zeus was particularly bad. Part of this, it explained, was Zeus’ paranoia of being overthrown, which was due to a prophecy, like his father’s, that one day Zeus would be overthrown in the same way. As such, Zeus took any hint of insubordination as a personal threat. Harry, reading this, was a little relieved that he would be part of the Underworld instead – he’d never played well with authority and just knew that he would somehow get himself into trouble. Zeus’ symbol was the lightning bolt, an immensely powerful weapon fashioned by the cyclopes.
Poseidon, the Lord of the Seas, was in contrast, a more relaxed figure. He ruled his domain from his capital in Atlantis with his wife Amphitrite and heir, Triton. Of his character, the book warned that he was generally easy-going in recent times, but his nature was like the sea – changing in a moment, unrestrainable, capable of tranquil calm and furious rage. Although Poseidon likely had the power to overthrow Zeus, he had no real wish to, and had only raised a rebellion with the goal of forcing Zeus to be a better ruler. Still, this had cemented Zeus’ mistrust of his brother. Poseidon’s symbol was the trident.
Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, was the entry that Harry was most interested in. How was his king – soon to be king? – described? Apparently, generally dour and not quite part of the family, seemed to be the response. Hades generally stayed in the Underworld, performing his role, and only visited Olympus for the winter solstice meeting of the gods. He was noted to be gloomy and prideful, but generally fair. He had shocked everyone when he asked Zeus for Persephone’s hand in marriage, received his affirmative, and abducted the goddess of Spring to be his wife. He was relieved to see the note, in Hecate’s distinctive tone, that despite Demeter’s claims, the two were in fact deeply in love. His symbol was the Helm of Darkness, which granted him invisibility.
They were called the Big Three, which seemed a bit of a silly name to Harry, but who was he to judge with all the hyphenated nonsense the wizarding world kept throwing at him? As well as a brief description of their main powers, the book noted their famous immortal, monstrous, and demigod children, along with their most notable deeds. Harry knew he was likely to forget them immediately, but with the sheer scale of the information, it was finally starting to hit him that he was going to become part of a world with thousands of years of history all centred around the same main cast. He flipped past the other major gods, overwhelmed, only noting the names of the 12 Olympians. Oddly, Hades wasn’t listed, and Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about his future (current?) sovereign not being included. The impression he got from the text was that the 12 were considered the most powerful, influential, and respected of the gods, so why was Hades, one of the Big Three and king of the Underworld, not included? He worried his lip thinking about it. Did they not like Underworld gods? Hecate had mentioned something of the sort. Harry felt a cold mix of dread and resignation settle in his stomach at the thought that he might once again be entering a new and unknown world where people hated him for something he couldn’t control.
He continued on anyway, learning that there were a number of major gods but hundreds of minor gods. As well as gods, there were nymphs and various types of spirits. In theory - though the book mentioned that in practice, it was a lot more complicated than that, and the explanation required a level of divine magic theory - every tree, stream, or breeze might be a nymph. Which felt…odd. Had they been there the whole time and Harry simply hadn’t seen them? Or were they in the US? Harry read through the lists, discomforted. He skimmed the rest after noting that there really was a god for more or less everything, and decided to read them in more detail later, when they’d actually be useful to him, and he wasn’t avoiding them.
He should be in luck though. From what he read, as long as he avoided drawing particular notice to them by saying their names, swearing an oath under their domain, sacrificing or praying directly to them, or practising their domain to a great extent, none of them should be particularly interested in him. Even if he did do any of the above, apparently, they mostly ignored that too, unless you were particularly attractive. Harry snorted at that comment, eyeing his scarred and skinny hands – he should be just fine.
After a while, he put the book down and leant his head back against the cushioned wall. It was good to learn about some of the main figures that he would one day have to get used to, but at the same time, he was still struggling to accept the situation as real. It would have been harder if he couldn’t feel the truth of it in the thrum of his magic, but even so, sometimes Harry found himself treating the book like a collection of stories rather than rules and profiles. Speaking of rules, the next chapter had a section on hierarchy, terms of address, and guidelines for Overworld gods and Harry’s instinctive rebellion had him curling his lip at it. He knew he had to read it – he just knew he would end up putting his foot in his mouth one day if he didn’t – but he’d reached the end of his tolerance for today. It was bad enough that he theoretically had a king and queen to answer to. Of course, that had always technically been the case, but it’s not like he was ever going to meet the Queen of England and answer to her directly. He paused. Did he still count as a British citizen? He huffed a laugh at the thought of handing over a passport with “Citizenship: Underworld” to a very confused border official. Ah well, questions for later. He ate a biscuit.
He passed a few days like this, skimming through the book to get a general picture of the Overworld deities and then going back more thoroughly. What emerged was a complex web of connections that spanned millennia, but that was strangely stagnant. Harry couldn’t help but notice that nothing about the gods ever seemed to change. Sure, they apparently changed clothes, and styles, and mortal lovers, but their personalities and actions were always the same. Aphrodite carried on her affair with Ares, Hephaestus always tried to catch and humiliate them, the other gods always laughed at them and then ignored the affair continuing – the same cycle repeated again and again. He wondered if it was part of being an immortal and tried to ignore the voice whispering in the back of his mind, asking 'would he end up like this too?'. He threw himself back into housework to ignore it.